Room of the Month - April 2015

[GF_Kennon]

Room of the Month is all about showing off your level design for any upcoming hack you may be working on, or perhaps you just wanted to create some fancy room just for the competition, who knows? This is one of the ways to show off anything WIP to the community and get constructive feedback, and maybe just maybe create the Room of the Year.

Rules - Archives

This month is apparently so little entries week as we only have two entrants, I blame Axiel and Hyper for this.

[spoiler=MetroidMst][/spoiler]
[spoiler=Vismund][/spoiler]

Well, looks like its a duel this month between MetroidMst and Vismund. Cast your votes!

[MetroidMst]

You thought my reign of triumph was over? Please! I was waiting for worthy challengers to show up, and instead all we got were whiners and complainers instead of actual skills. PREPARE YOURSELF FOR TEXT SO DESPICABLE IT HAS BEEN BANNED IN 39 COUNTRIES BEFORE I EVEN FINISHED IT!

[spoiler=Vismund's Room: AKA Too bad Australia didn't kill you before making this disaster.]The first and only thing this pile of loofah made me think of is a bipolar fart. Smells bad on either end, just different flavors of sucks you can smell. OF COURSE, IT ALSO REMINDS ME OF BATMAN, AND IT IS REALLY TOO BAD HARVEY DIDN'T DENT THIS TO LOOK ANY BETTER! For realred though, I have to tell you that there are two things of complete sewer material in here. Saving is normally a good thing in hacks, BUT YOU MADE IT WORK ONLY FOR BENT PILGRIMS! Seriously, when loading, the screen will be centered in the scroll, and only half of Samus will be showing, and movement will snap the camera harder than the palettes will snap players eyes out of their head. Slap a pig and call it yo momma.
The second thing that makes me want to barf on a quartet of babies after slapping their mothers is the swapping of colors. The idea I presume is to have everything red be blue, and so on and so forth. THERE IS NO RED ON THE BLUE SIDE OTHER THAN THE DOORS, AND THEY HAVEN'T MADE GOOD MUSIC SINCE THE 1720s! Everything is actually Purple Rain, and it sure isn't getting past my uber detective eyeball of fury. NEXT TIME YOU FEEL THE NEED TO POOP ON SMILE, PLEASE WIPE THE CRAP OFF.[/spoiler]
[spoiler=Orange Peel]The delicious scent of pure radness is as undeniable as the flavor of a grapefruit brings out the appealing nature of citrus. The grand shape of victory forms layers of pleasure all over your visual cortex, while the color brings out the best of the ancient arts. I am sorry I destroyed you mortals with no effort at all, but that is the price one must pay to be this good and try to train you lot.[/spoiler]

NEXT MONTH I EXPECT ACTUAL EFFORT FROM THE PUBES WHO INHABIT THIS REALM OF CAT TUBES.

[Vismund Cygnus]

Seriously, when loading, the screen will be centered in the scroll, and only half of Samus will be showing, and movement will snap the camera harder than the palettes will snap players eyes out of their head. Slap a pig and call it yo momma.

[spoiler=It's a 3*3]

[/spoiler]
I suppose I should write a review for Mst's room while I'm here;

[spoiler]The room is well structured, it's clear to me that this room is designed to be more of a playable room as opposed to showing off any particular aesthetics. That said, it's well structured and the palette fits really nicely. I'm not a huge fan of the tileset itself but I can appreciate the way you've used it. N oreal cons, but nothing particularly wow here.[/spoiler]
That said, I can't believe you didn't hide a smiley face in the background. This room makes me feel like you've perhaps been working on some other kind of non-hacking endeavour. . .
[spoiler=Seen somewhere in the States][/spoiler]

[Retroo]

My vote goes to Vismund!

[NARFNra]

I feel Vismund's room is much more visually interesting, although I'm not really a fan of perfect symmetry. MST does a good job at varying up the tiling, but the room structure overall is a bit dull and full of empty space. Goin' with Vismind.

[Cpt.Glitch]

[spoiler=Mst's room] I like the varying shape of the room and the use of tiles. The subtle arrow is also a nice touch. Not a big fan on the bright bubble-like background but I'm sure it looks much nicer in-game[/spoiler]

[spoiler=Vismund's room] Though perfect symmetry ruins the natural look, the room is very appealing. I like how even the door caps are opposite colors. Small, but it's a nice touch. [/spoiler]

I went with Vismund mainly because the colors stand out to me more than Mst's. I like colors. :P 

[Quietus]

Mst for me.  I like the not-so-subtle background hint. :^_^:

[Grimlock]

Due to the limited submissions Room Of The Month has officially been terminated!!!

Fear not, I have consulted with the MC oracle and have returned with a blessedly divine solution...

Behold the next evolution in epic Metroid Construction community contests:

[spoiler][/spoiler]

Our first contestant brings a vastly colorful (2-tone) style in a uniquely (the same) symmetrical format:
Hoping to double his face count and ultimately face palm his opponent...
[spoiler][/spoiler]

Our second contestant uses a traditional "Background Barf" placement method:
This is the well known "phuc it" technique...
[spoiler][/spoiler]

Time to face the light: FINAL COUNT
[spoiler]

Face it Vismund, you're facing an in your face defeat...

VISMUND = 7
MST         = 15

Final vote has to go to MST for facing up to the challenge.

[/spoiler]

[Lazymoth]

MetroidMST:
    The purple background elements definitely need to be darker, they're quite hard on the eyes- and on the other hand, the dark blue/teal colors for machinery is too close to the black around it... you have good things going on with the purple and yellow complementary tones, but the blue is kind of random. Blue and orange are good together but I think the focus should be kept on the yellow/purple contrast in this case, so I'd recommend the tech instead be dark purple if you want a different color, but considering that there are tech-looking tiles with the orange palette, you could just use orange as well.

    Also, the repetition, placement and composition of the background tiles really highlights the 16x16 grid. I feel like if there were fewer bubbles in the tiles and they were more spaced out (in addition to being darker) it would be an improvement. For example (also includes darker purples and changes tech pillar to purple, might not be as good as using orange for the tech parts now that I think about it):



Made and used these four tiles for the edit:

Comparison animation:



    That aside, structurally, I feel like the upper room is too empty. Perhaps I'm missing mechanical in-game context that justifies the space but I feel like from an objective "how nice does this room look" standpoint the upper chamber would have greatly benefitted from a platform or two to fill the empty space and lend to the composition. Also not really a fan of the arrow pointing to the secret chamber.

    Yellows and purples are some of my favorite colors so I love to see them in screens like this. Also, I always have respect for people who use non-vanilla tiles. That alone is extra workload, so good job.

Vismund Cygnus:
    I love big hub rooms and this seems like a cool one. Symmetry can be iffy but I think the theme of duality makes it work here. I like the Chozo statues holding up the save points, too. This makes those Maridia tiles seem pretty fresh to me... I'd like to see Maridia tiles used in a non-water level related context.

[Lazymoth]

I guess I killed Room of the Month. It's all my fault.

Were there any May submissions?

[Mayo-chan]

I'm not much of a fan of the bright purple stuffs in Mst's room, and the perfect symmetry of Vismund's room has an unsettling effect to it, which reminds me of the first Alien movie, so I'm going for that.

Both of them have harsh, unnaturally bright coloring to them though, yikes. Bonus points for Mst's room resembling one of the beta rooms from Metroid Fusion.

[RT-55J]

I sent in a submission to GF (at least I think I did), but I labeled it for the month of June since I wasn't sure what month to put.